The deck railing had been her final project, at least for the time being. She had slathered on the SPF-50, pulled the brim of her fraying Denver Broncos cap down low to shield her face and, with the boombox moved to just inside the back doorway and tuned to a rock station out of Wichita, she spent several hours driving six-inch wood screws through each slat and securing the corners of the railing with galvanized steel braces. When she was finally done, every inch of her skin was covered in sweat and sawdust, and a long, damp peninsula ran down the back of her tank. She tested her work by leaning all of her weight against the rail, even stretching her arms out as far as they would reach to put as much pressure on the railing as possible. The wood creaked in protest, but the screws and braces held.
As she was packing up the drill and the rechargeable battery, she noticed the beetle. It was crawling down one of the balusters, away from the top rail, stopping every now and then to swipe the air with furry antennae as if trying to pick up a signal. It was modest in size, barely the width of a dime, with a glossy black end and a pale yellow thorax. At the center of its thorax, just above its head, was an odd dark splotch like an ink drop. It looked like a mini Rorschach test. The shape made her immediately think of a plump bird just beginning to unfold its wings as it took flight.
Kris could name over forty breeds of cats and more than two hundred breeds of dogs off the top of her head, as well as more facts that she ever thought she would know about birds, horses, sheep, and goats. Being a vet in Colorado, she was no longer surprised by what constituted a “pet.” She didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of times a sick boa or python or bearded dragon had been carried into her office. But insects she knew little about unless they were commonly burrowed into or nibbling on the flesh of her patients.
This one looked harmless enough, though. She watched it curiously as it carefully traversed a split in the wood to make its way to the edge of the bottom rail. There it paused, its front legs reaching into the open air in a hopeless attempt to span the distance to the deck floor.
Kris lowered her hand down under the beetle. It reared back slightly, alarmed by the close movement. But after a moment, it dangled its front legs once again into open air until the prickly points of its front claws found her smooth flesh. She waited until it had pulled itself the rest of the way onto the base of her index finger before moving her hand down to rest atop the deck floor.
The beetle did not move. It remained perched on her palm as if afraid to venture farther.
With the back of her thumb, she gently nudged its butt until finally it got the hint and crept carefully off her hand and onto a wooden plank. It paused, raising its head high into the air, its antennae twitching, and then it slipped into a hole about the size of a quarter and disappeared into the darkness beneath the deck.
She sat back next to the open drill case and found herself hoping she had sent the beetle off in the right direction. She hoped it was scurrying along the underside of the deck, that it would find the lattice work that lined the lower half like a skirt, that it would make its way down to the dead grass below to whatever stone or hole in the earth that it called home. It was silly, wasting thoughtful wishes on a bug, but Kris had been that way since she was a child, always wanting to help every creature in need. It got to the point that her mother would always make sure there was an empty coffee can in the car, numerous holes poked into its plastic lid with an ice pick, just in case Kris spotted a box turtle on the side of the road during one of their summer drives, or a tarantula crossing the highway on its autumn journey to find a mate. Her father told her she couldn’t save them all, and she knew he was right. But she could save one or two, the ones that desperately needed her help, right then and there. She knew the one thing she couldn’t do was pass it by. She could save it. She could fix it.
Like you fixed Jonah, the taunting voice purred from far off in the darkness.
She tried to ignore the comment. There was no need to enter into a mental debate. Jonah was his own person. He had made his own choices.
And so the voice turned the screw tighter: Like you’re fixing Sadie.
Kris clenched her eyes shut and imagined her thoughts to be daggers, cold and narrowing to a razor-sharp point, as she hurled them blindly into the recesses of her mind: I’m not trying to fix Sadie, I’m just trying to … reset. That’s all. To hold down the power button and let our regular life shut down. And after this summer, I’ll fire it back up, and we’ll go home. And maybe, just maybe, everything will run a little more smoothly. Maybe the pain will be a little less.
And if that doesn’t happen? the taunting voice asked. She had never associated a face with this voice, but something about its tone convinced her that if there was a face, it was smiling.
She’s playing, Kris thought, more to herself than to the disembodied voice in the darkness. I’m giving her space and it’s helping. She’s playing and laughing. She’s pretending. Using her imagination just like she used to. That means something, right? That has to mean something.
If her playing is a good thing, the shadow voice asked, then why does it scare you?
Kris knew that the voices in her head were are part of her, that they were fractured pieces of a single mind. Yet this comment felt completely detached. She had never thought of Sadie’s activities as scaring her. Troublesome? Maybe. Annoying? At times. But scary? What reason did she have to be scared?
Ask Camilla that question, her shadow voice whispered.
No. Such thoughts would do no good. Kris pushed them all—Sadie, the lost girls, the sadness that hung over the town—out of her mind.
Focus on the work, she commanded.
Through the boombox speakers, an overly amped DJ suddenly began to holler in a high-pitched twang that if they were the tenth caller to name the next song, they would be rewarded with two free tickets to the “most bitchin,’ hardest rockin’ show to invade the Intrust Bank Arena all mutha-effin’ year.” He assured them this life-altering event could only be provided by K106.7, the Blade, and then his thin, nasally voice was replaced by aggressively assaulted guitar strings descending in a surprisingly thoughtful, melodic riff.
“Foo Fighters,” Kris announced to no one. “‘Monkey Wrench.’”
She had just allowed herself a momentary fantasy—picking up her cell phone, dialing the radio station, hearing her own voice through the boombox speakers as the DJ declared her the winner—when, from somewhere inside the house, there came a thump.
She paused, listening.
It had been a door closing, but the sound had been distant, not from just down the hall.
There was only one door on the second floor. The small square door to the room behind the wall.
Kris glanced back over her shoulder, through the open French doors, her eyes rising slowly up to find the section of wall above the entryway to the kitchen.
Behind that wall was the extra storage space.
The secret room.
Reaching for the boombox in the doorway, she twisted the volume knob all the way to the left, silencing the music. She tried to force all other sounds away—the whisper of the breeze, the rustle of leaves, the buzz of insects in the grass, the lap of water against the lakeshore. She tried to focus only on that wall and what lay beyond it, out of sight.
A song.
Someone was singing, their voice light and ethereal.